Hakan Lans lost against Dell and Gateway

[Egoist Blog]

By Martin Lindeskog from EGO,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I wonder why we haven't read more about Håkan Lans's fight against Dell and Gateway in American media. Here is an excerpt from Peter Zura's post, Håkan Lans Is Back at The Federal Circuit (and Sweden Will Be Watching):

In one of the strangest, and most controversial patent infringement cases in recent history, Håkan Lans (aka Uniboard Aktiebolag) returns to the Federal Circuit on October 6, where the court will determine his fate on the disastrous enforcement effort regarding U.S. Patent No. 4,303,986 (Panel J: Friday, October 6, 2006, 10:00 A.M., Courtroom 203 - 2006-1070 Lans v. Gateway 2000) .

A prolific inventor and a folk hero in his native Sweden, Lans was granted the '986 patent in 1981, which covered Video Graphics Array (VGA) technology. In 1989, Lans agreed to license the ’986 patent to IBM. However, for tax reasons, Lans wanted to have his shell company, Uniboard, grant the license. To assure that Uniboard possessed the rights it was purporting to license, IBM requested that Lans first execute an assignment of the ’986 patent to Uniboard. Lans executed the assignment to Uniboard personally and then, on behalf of Uniboard, executed the license to IBM. Lans soon obtained licenses from others, including Hitachi, HP, and Apple.

In 1996, Lans sent letters to the computer industry accusing numerous companies of infringing the ’986 patent. The letters identify Lans as “the inventor and owner” of the ’986 patent, but did not mention Uniboard.

In 1997, Lans personally sued numerous companies for infringement of the ’986 patent. The complaint did not include Uniboard as a plaintiff. During discovery, the defendants found out about the assignment, and concluded that Lans had no business asserting the patent claim, because he wasn't, in fact, the owner.

And that's when everything started to unravel for Lans. (271patent.blogspot.com, 09/28/06.)

http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/002504.html

[KendallJ]

If what you describe here are the actual facts then because he assigned the patent rights, Lans does not own the rights. His company does. His company must be the party to bring suit.

It's a technicality and the patent could certainly have been infringed. I'm suspicious though. One does not place great value on something they invented and want to be duly compensated for and at the same time "forget" who they assigned the patent to.

Edited May 1, 2007 by KendallJ

[Qwertz]

If Lans is sole owner of Uniboard, there shouldn't be a problem. There probably wouldn't even be a problem if he had a partner. Because as owner, he would have authority to sue on the company's behalf. Minor error; any judge would let Lans amend his pleading to fix it. There would be a problem if he subsequently sold Uniboard without retaining an interest.

Is there more to this story? The post suggests that there is more, but I can't find any more.

-Q

[KendallJ]

The Peter Zura blog link goes into more detail. Seems as though the he fumbled around and finally files suit as his company after the patent life ran out. I don't see an issue with it.